Subject: TAN: Legends, Coyotes and Manslayers (DFS Report)(Re: I went, I saw, I got out alive!) From: Jeff Huo Organization: Denizens of the Wolverine White Coat Ghetto Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written.robert-jordan NNTP-Posting-Host: 207.75.176.85 In article <7204-3AC684B9-50@storefull-627.iap.bryant.webtv.net>, padawanlearner@webtv.net says... > Huo was procured, Madhu spoken to on the phone, and Rothgery, IIRC, > while omelettes sprang full-blown from Maggie's brow and tales of > flunkies were told. I think that's my cue. Lara and Zeynep were keeping the quotes: Zeynep and Laura will be supplying the first-timer's stories and Maggie the exhaustive blow-by-blow; everyone else will contribute witty commentary. My angle? Backstory, I think, a "Behind the Music" sorta thing, a tale of a Michigan Wolverine and three particular wonderful women... :-) The Wheel turns, and rasfwr-j be no different. One reads the books and then discovers the group. If you're smart, you read the FAQs and lurk a while. Eventually, you take a deep breath and take the plunge; you post and quickly meet lots of new folks and friends. You post some more. You take another deep breath and go to a DFS. Then another. Before you know it, you're a regular... ...in time, perhaps you stay and become a Legend, like Pam the FAQ Queen or Novak, Master of Storms (see COSI, later in this post). Or circumstance and Real Life reclaim thee and you quietly fade away. The latter be my course, which is probably why many of you are wondering just who the $%#@!! I am. :-) I lurked for a number of years, then came aboard when I began a research fellowship in August of '99. Made my first Social in March of 2000, then Chicago again in June and the hosted one at the Ann Arbor Arts fair in August. Learned a lot, laughed a lot, had a lot of fun. When Ph.D. classwork and fellowship applications came down hard in fall of 2000, I quietly made my exit off rasfwr-j's stage left; when class conflicts and sudden research appointments just hours before the October Chicago DFS made me miss it, I figured that, was that. Not quite. I did promise three wonderful women, didn't I? :-) The first is Maggie Brazeau of the Green Ajah, Lady of Toledo and rasfwr-j patron saint of Magaritas. :-) In early January 2000 she gave me a ring on ICQ; after the first social I became her most junior Warder. Even after my disappearance off the group we kept in touch on a regular basis over ICQ... ...which leads me to the second Lady of our tale, Laura M. "Trickster" Parkinson. Laura popped in into my ICQ box in August of 2000 and we've been having fun ever since. Some moons later, we were chatting one night on ICQ a little before her birthday. Anyone who knows Laura knows she loves coyotes; she mentioned that night that, despite this, she'd never been able to find a coyote stuffed animal in any store she'd ever been to, and how cool it would be to do so... ...thirty minutes later, Laura was demanding of Maggie over ICQ to know what she and her Warder-in-crime were up to and why we wanted her mailing address... Amazing what one can find with Google: (search) "coyote stuffed animal".... :-) Anyone who was at the Social met Mat, the Trickster Coyote Folkmanis hand puppet, who was much more of a fluffy arm-ful than either Maggie or I was expecting from the picture and online catalog, but I get ahead of myself... So when Maggie declared the Spring DFS and many a regular, including Laura with Mat in tow, declared themselves in, I very much wanted to come...but there would need to happen a miracle to get me from Ann Arbor down south to Toledo, as I own not a car nor any easy means of transport twixt the two points... ...enter Anne Willick, the third wonderful Lady of my tale. :-) Anne bravely stepped forward after poor Madhu bashed his foot and was sidelined from the Social. A fellow Detroiter, she and Kenn volunteered to come up and fetch me Sat morn, and thus they found themselves in front of my place... It turns out that Anne graduated from college with a medical classmate of mine the same year I graduated from Northwestern, and in fact lived for a short time in the same apartment complex as I do now. Small world. :-) After a quick driving tour of the U. Michigan campus at Kenn's request, a dizzying sojurn about the nasty knot of one-way streets that is Ann Arbor later we were off to Toledo, arriving shortly therafter at Mark and Maggie's home. I believe I was the last to arrive. It was wonderful to meet Ray Chason, Lara, Zeynep, Darryl and Laura (and Mat of course. :-)] for the first time! We had omelets and much conversation. [One must see, if one gets the chance, the comics that Laura and Darryl are doing together --especially the warrior-woman with guns and Loy2K shirt.] We heard the Flunky story. ["You have Thirty! Four! New! Messages!" "I'm not sure how he ended up with a copy card with four staples in it..." ] After this, off to COSI we went, and Maggie's young son Alex and I got into much mischief rerouting rivers and climbing walls. [He beat me twice on the cycling racetrack. :-) ] The rafwr-jians built a roller coaster that only flung two car-loads of screaming visitors into Oblivion during testing. Novak demonstrated his mastery of Tornados and tried to crash the Earth into the Sun. Kenn conjured 250 mph sustained winds over Kentucky. Rasfwr-jians in a science museum is always a riot. :-) Afterwards we went to Kotobuki, a local Japanese restaurant. Novak and Mark rebelled against the general idea by ordering Steak Japanese style. Around me, Zeynep, Anne and Laura braved Sushi for the first time. (Even raw things with suckers.) Particularly surreal conversations regarding the legality of canibalism, tentacle-sex anime and the enduring poularity among Japanese young women of explicit erotic homosexual young boy comics stick out in my mind from my part of the table. Post dinner, Laura introduced us to the spendors of the anime classics Battosai the Manslayer. Kenshin kicks ass. Sano kicks ass. Opium, Kobe Beef, and the Desperados of Democracy made their appearances. The MST3King of the ass-kicking kicked ass. Early the next morning, the early risers (Pam, Laura, and later Maggie and I) shot the breeze in the hallway while everyone else slept ("We had a campaign of Vampire that resembled an episode of the "Gong Show...") and after some sinful french toast Anne kindly took me back up to the medical center at Ann Arbor. Many thanks to Anne Willick for making my appearance possible; many thanks to Mark and Maggie Brazeau for making the whole Social possible, and many thanks to everyone who helped make it so much fun (although, as always, far too short!) Until next time... Cheers! -Jeff Huo absentee rasfwr-jian and Junior Warder to Maggie Sedai -- Jeff Huo | jeff@spundreams.net.nospam (remove nospam) U. Michigan Med | http://www.spundreams.net/~jeff New to the group? Welcome! Please read http://www.landfield.com/faqs/sf/robert-jordan-faq/ http://www.spundreams.net/~jeff/rasfwrjians2.html